AiG Prominently Featured on CNN!

AiG’s many outreaches that uphold the reliability of the Bible from its very first verse were profiled on the CNN-TV newsmagazine CNN and Time on Sunday evening March 12. This program—coproduced by Time magazine—is CNN’s version of the investigative TV broadcast “60 Minutes.”

The 12-minute program (entitled “In the Beginning”) opened with a segment on efforts by Christians across America to de-emphasize the teaching of evolution in public schools, including a biology teacher in Minnesota who refuses to teach evolution as fact. The second half of the program highlighted AiG’s growing influence in the United States, including its well-attended seminars, teaching resources on creation/evolution (especially on dinosaurs), a future major museum, and more than 100 student-led “Creation Clubs” (mostly in public schools).

Last January, a CNN/Time crew of four spent over three hours with Ken Ham of AiG. He was asked about the recent resurgence of creationist interest and activity around the United States, which includes large audiences at his AiG seminars. (For example, three recent meetings in Phoenix, Arizona drew over 13,000 children and adults—video clips of those meetings were featured by CNN.)

The program’s reporting was generally fair. AiG is grateful that its message that the Bible is reliable could be broadcast worldwide and that viewers were also treated to a “sneak preview” of some of the outstanding exhibits already collected for AiG’s proposed museum. On the other hand, the program did misreport what happened in the state-run schools of Kansas last August. The state board did not “remove” evolution from its science curriculum as reported. Evolution does remain in sections of the state-approved curriculum (e.g., p. 79 of the standards says that students are expected to know “biological evolution”).

Two prominent evolutionists were interviewed by CNN. Dr. Eugenie Scott of the anti-creationist group The National Center for Science Education falsely accused organizations like AiG of wanting to get “evolution out of schools.” On the contrary, AiG wants students to be exposed to this dominant worldview, but that they should be taught the scientific problems with it. That same opinion was articulately expressed by the Christian teacher in Minnesota mentioned earlier, who has been removed from his biology classes and reassigned to general courses because he does not teach evolution as fact (and in one class didn’t teach evolution in-depth because he ran out of time in a shortened semester). The civil-rights group the American Center for Law and Justice is handling his legal challenge to the reassignment. The ACLJ told CNN that the teacher has the legal right and the academic freedom to present evidence against evolution.

Leading evolutionary paleontologist Stephen J. Gould of Harvard declared (in a condescending tone) that there is no evidence against evolution. Ken Ham countered with the argument (although regrettably his comments ended up “on the cutting room floor”) that both evolutionists and creationists have the same evidence, but it is the interpretation of that evidence that has created the two divergent views of origins.

Gould also cavalierly dismissed the CNN reporter’s observation that many scientists reject macro-evolution. He sniffed that no “serious scientist” doubts evolution. Yet there are literally thousands of practicing scientists around the world who hold graduate degrees in science who reject macro-evolution and accept Genesis creation instead. In fact, AiG knows of at least two such scientists who just happen to hold Ph.D.s from Gould’s school!

Dr. Gould resorted to the hackneyed argument that if creation is allowed to be taught in public schools, then the flat earth theory should also. This is an “apples and oranges” comparison, for even a layperson today can observe that the earth is round (e.g., when watching pictures of the earth taken from space, and also when the earth’s roundness is shown as a shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse, etc.). Furthermore, we know of no credentialed scientist who holds to a flat-earth view anyway. The theory of “molecules-to-man” evolution is outside observational science, but the shape of the earth is not. For all of Gould’s brilliance, one would think that he could come up with a better analogy and argument to defend his censoring of creation.

AiG was glad for the opportunity to proclaim biblical truths and to receive exposure for its proposed Creation Museum in the Cincinnati area. AiG was also encouraged to hear the results of a recent CNN poll that revealed that 68% of Americans believe that creation should be taught in public schools (a different poll—commissioned by the liberal group People For the American Way—on March 10 had an even higher figure of 79%).

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Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively. We focus on providing answers to questions about the Bible—particularly the book of Genesis—regarding key issues such as creation, evolution, science, and the age of the earth.